Bargaining

Highlights

Session 6 - October 29

OUSD and the OEA Safety BT were scheduled to continue bargaining urgent safety issues, including imminently expiring Covid leave, on October 29 at 4:30pm. At 4:18pm, the OUSD bargaining team informed OEA via email that it would be cancelling the session. In this email, OUSD also asked the OEA team to review a list of ground rules in lieu of the Friday meeting. Meanwhile, our members face a crisis as state Covid leave will expire on October 31. Our safety depends on our ability to stay home when we have Covid symptoms or need to quarantine because of Covid exposure. Without a separate bank of Covid leave days that can be taken without eating into our sick and personal banks, our school communities are at risk!

Session 5 - October 26

• OEA proposed discussing extending COVID leave, ventilation and nutrition breaks

• OUSD committed to provide several documents and committed to a timeline

• OUSD refused to agree to install CO2 monitors because “ We don’t know what using CO2 monitors will mean for our schools... will it mean a massive school closure”

• There is no clarity on who tested the HVAC systems and whether or not it was done professionally. The team was instead presented with a calculator that Mr. Thomas designed himself.

• OUSD provided a counter offer on nutrition breaks

• No agreement was reached on COVID leave and is set to be discussed at the next session

Session 4 - October 22nd

• OEA President Keith Brown shared an opening statement about the urgency of the safety issues and the need to resolve them

• OUSD says it maintains its last proposal

• We walked them through our proposal on ventilation and had an extensive discussion on ventilation and outdoor eating equipment

• OUSD will share a “memo” with us, not a counter-proposal

• Stall, stall, stall

Session 3 - October 19th

• The OUSD team provided budget documents and requested an immediate caucus to review

• OUSD refused to bargain almost every topic with us and say these topics have already been settled in previous MOUs and the most recent agreements.

Session 2 - October 15

We presented the entirety of the proposal and asked budget questions of the Chief Business Officer. In the first session, the district claimed an $11 million deficit. In this session, we clarified the following information:

• $100 million of Covid funding remains unspent

• There was a budget surplus last year, not a deficit

• The $11 million “deficit” cited to us in the first meeting was a projected deficit for 2022-2023 based on an interim budget

Session 1 - October 12

We presented the first three topics to the table: nutrition breaks, ventilation, and the extension of Covid leave.

More complete presentation below: